70% of the FAAs budget is operations, things like ATC tower staffing; by law 8% of that budget vanished on 1MAR. How much of the IRS' budget goes to ops/staffing? Besides which, if FAA is not following the law, someone should figure out exactly how and where, and file whatever papers need to be filed (an injunction?) to make FAA staff things how they think (or how the law says) they ought to be staffed.

Or - and this is a real complicated proposal here - Congress can alter the law they passed in August 2011. Hell, they could pass a whole new one, special for the FAA.

The sequester is a Congress-created problem. The power to fix it lies with Congress.

You don't see any Republican hashtags blaming the president for cutting housing vouchers to 140,000 low-income families, which has begun. These vouchers are given by cities to families on the brink of homelessness, and about half of them go to families with children.

There aren't any angry tweets about the 70,000 Head Start slots about to be eliminated, which is forcing some school districts to distribute these valuable services by lottery. Or about the cuts to Vista, which is hurting the program that performs antipoverty work in many states. Or the 11 percent cut in unemployment benefits for millions of jobless workers. Link

Dr Dreidel:HAMMERTOE: Question: How many IRS auditors have been furloughed?

70% of the FAAs budget is operations, things like ATC tower staffing; by law 8% of that budget vanished on 1MAR. How much of the IRS' budget goes to ops/staffing? Besides which, if FAA is not following the law, someone should figure out exactly how and where, and file whatever papers need to be filed (an injunction?) to make FAA staff things how they think (or how the law says) they ought to be staffed.

Or - and this is a real complicated proposal here - Congress can alter the law they passed in August 2011. Hell, they could pass a whole new one, special for the FAA.

The sequester is a Congress-created problem. The power to fix it lies with Congress.

The TSA has also reneged on it's plan to allow small knives in the wake of recent events. Because if anything would have stopped the Boston bombings, it would have been stopping a passenger from taking a penknife on a plane 1000 miles away.

Dr Dreidel:Or - and this is a real complicated proposal here - Congress can alter the law they passed in August 2011. Hell, they could pass a whole new one, special for the FAA. The sequester is a Congress-created problem. The power to fix it lies with Congress.

According to TFA, there are bills in the Senate to fix specific areas like this, but there is no sense of urgency in bringing them to a vote:

In Congress, the most significant piece of legislation crafted to deal with the sequester's broadside to the FAA comes from Sens. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). Their bill, which has attracted co-sponsorship from one-third of the Senate, would ensure that air-traffic control towers would not close - though it wouldn't even touch furloughs.The Moran-Blumenthal bill remains stalled in the Commerce Committee, however, where Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) was noncommittal on taking up the legislation, despite his own exasperation with the Obama administration about the flight delays. He was even unsure about Congress's role in crafting a solution."I don't think there's anything we can do," Rockefeller said.

Reid and Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) have indicated the Senate is unlikely to consider piecemeal legislation dealing with specific areas of sequester pain, absent a larger deal. Even if Reid does bring the Moran-Blumenthal bill to the floor, Senate aides said, it's unlikely a vote would be held before next week's recess.

Congress plays politics too - in this case, Congress wants the public to be mad at Fartbama for farting the sequester all over the air trafart controllers. Obama, in turn, wants Congress to fart its head out of its ass and make actual cuts to actual programs rather than say "everyone give up 8%, and I'm not to keen on the specifics. In fact, NO SPECIFICS!" This is the inevitability of such a move - gamesmanship to force action by the "other" side. Problem is, the sequester was all the GOP had, and now that Obama's making it hurt a bit more than the GOP thought it would, Congress wants out of the headlock its holding itself in, Sheriff Bart style.

It's a bit of political trolling on Obama's part - I'm sure there is more than one way to make sure no public-facing FAA staff lose an hour's work - but Congress could fart out a "We're gonna take a bunch of money from X and use it to backfill the FAAs ATC/[whatever else] budget" if it's really that bad.

I find it kind of funny that they use a picture of a foreign aircraft taking off for a domestic ATC issue. Not that it's that big of a deal, but still. They couldn't wait for the next Delta or United Plane to takeoff?

pzsamscore:I find it kind of funny that they use a picture of a foreign aircraft taking off for a domestic ATC issue. Not that it's that big of a deal, but still. They couldn't wait for the next Delta or United Plane to takeoff?

And they use LAX which won't be as affected. They are mainly furloughing workers at small regional airports. If you're flying hub to hub you shouldn't have too much trouble.

I am all for making Congress do its job, but I can't force them to do anything, and they just continue to grandstand. I have a feeling that in about 20-40 years when the South secedes again to have Jesus land back, and the north and the west coast can get back to business.

jjorsett:Deneb81: HAMMERTOE: Question: How many IRS auditors have been furloughed?

Answer: All of them.

What's your point?

What, one day every two weeks or so? I think the op was making the point that, just maybe, we could do with fewer auditors and more ATCs for the duration of this 'crisis'.

That would have been nice, right? an actual budget agreement that makes sense?

But the sequester doesn't work that way. Every department has to cut it's own costs. Whether its the FAA, or the IRS, or the Park Rangers. They're all getting basically the same furloughs.

Thank the idiots who decided it 'wasn't a big deal'. It was a poison pill ON PURPOSE to force a negotiation. A negotiation that never happened because the Senate couldn't get a bill out to go to reconciliation.